Writing in the Arts and Sciences, a textbook authored by notable Arcadia faculty members that was originally published in 1981, has been re-released and made available in open-access format. 

Published by Winthrop Publishers, Writing in the Arts and Sciences was authored by Dr. Elaine P. Maimon, Dr. Gerald L. Belcher, Dr. Gail W. Hearn, Dr. Barbara F. Nodine, and Dr. Finbarr W. O’Connor.

Dr. Maimon, who has become a thought leader in education reform, organized the following Arcadia faculty to participate in one of the nation’s first writing-across-the-curriculum programs, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Dr. Belcher is former professor of History; Dr. Hearn is former professor of Biology; Dr. Barbara Nodine is Professor Emerita, who specializes in cognitive psychology; Dr. O’Connor is Professor Emeritus and former chair of Religion and Philosophy.

The book has been made available by the WAC Clearinghouse, an open-access publishing collaborative, with the permission of the authors, who now own the copyrights. Named a landmark book, the volume is now part of the Clearinghouse’s Landmark Publications in Writing Studies series.

The Clearinghouse makes the following statement on its website:
“Writing in the Arts and Sciences is one of the first and certainly the most successful of the early textbooks that emerged from a WAC [writing across the curriculum] movement that was, when the book was first conceived, still in its first decade. Drawing from work at Beaver College (now Arcadia University) as well as a series of national seminars on WAC, the authors address both writing to learn and learning to write, with chapters devoted to writing in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. In their preface, the authors observe, ‘Each discipline has traditions that shape the reading and writing of its practitioners, but these scholarly traditions, with their specialized procedures, conventions, and terminology, may appear to the student as mysterious rites of passage. The purpose of this text is to cast light on those mysterious academic rites that until recently have been open to too few.’ ”